Let's Talk UNLV

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This is a k u and v studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and more the University of Nevada Las Vegas or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

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Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Let's Talk UNLV at K u n d 91.5. This is Dr. Tanya crab and I'm joined with my co host, Dr. Sami skills. Thank you everyone for joining us here on K, u and v. Let's talk UNLV. And today we have a really special guest we have the Dean of Engineering, Dr. Rama Venkat. How are you Dr. Rhonda? I'm doing great. Excellent, excellent. Oh, you know, I first I want to before we start I just want to say that Dr. Rama Venkat bought all this wonderful energy into the room. So I'm like, totally hyped to have a conversation with him because you just y'all just don't know You missed it. But he is just a wonderful, awesome human. So Dr. Van cat, how let's start with your origin story. How did you end up at UNLV? What brought you here? I grew up in South India, port city called Chennai. And my parents were were middle class family. Parents were both high school graduates. mom was a homemaker, dad was a government employee, big on education. My mom was very entrepreneurial. Even though she was homemaker. Man. She ran a lot of businesses, I learned a lot of skills as a young kid, learn a lot of skills from her. And since we were lower middle class, five kids, so we went to public schools. And my parents always said, You got to have a degree. If you don't have a degree, you're not going to get a job. And my my father was very big on engineering and because it was good in math and science. So I went to one of the top schools in in in India, even though I went to public school, there was this entrance exam to get into college to do engineering. And usually 100,000 students try it. They pick about 1500 Students Wow, really comparatively, very compared actually nowadays. Kids prepare for this from their middle school for about 678 years to get in WoW. School. I didn't know much about it. One of my uncle told me about it. I took the test, I prepared for it for 234 months. Somehow I got in, I didn't even know when the results were come. And when one day somebody said at 11 o'clock in the morning, the results were out at six o'clock in the morning, I went to the paper and I saw my number was there. So that's how I got into the school. I was 1008 the rank order 1500 student they chose. I remember that top school. It's like MIT of India. Great education, very tough school, because these kids are all the bright brightest of India. So it really bright kids. I did my bachelor's degree there and then to do PhD, I came to Purdue University. I did PhD in electrical engineering, good education, good upbringing. Parents always cared for education. My mother used to say by hook or crook you're gonna go to college. My dad was very good in English, even though his high school graduate used to say, beg, borrow or steal. You guys are going to be educated. That's what he said. And he did. And that's how I finished my PhD first in the family to do a PhD. First job is UNLV. I've been here 34 years. Wow. My goodness, this was your first job. After your PhD program. Yes, I landed here. Only employer don't tell my boss him a man fired me. But I'm just telling you. I love this place. I grew up with UNLV. I grew up in Las Vegas a lot of opportunities for me in terms of professionally, I love educating our kids. I'm telling you, these kids, first generation students, minority students, kids who don't know what engineering is, when they come to us, and they say we want to get an engineering education, the graduate Mega 70 $80,000 job, man, I love it. I love it. That is excellent. That's a great story. I didn't know that. And it's always nice to have, you know, to have someone with your, with your drive with your motivation, with your willingness to help student that to be in a in a position where students can see someone that look like them, and have that sense of belonging and say, Yeah, I definitely fit in here. I belong here. And I have someone to actually help me get through this program. So let's talk about this brand new engineering building this here on campus that I hear so much about. So could you tell us about the building? What does it have to offer that kind of thing? Yeah, the building was because when I became Dean about 1314 years ago, 14 years ago, exactly maybe April 10 or April 14, this was 2010 was when I was appointed. So that 14 years now. So at that time, we were growing pretty good. We our undergraduate enrollment was going for two

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5% year on year growth. So within about three, four years, I recognize we are running out of space plus class are becoming large. We used to teach 2030 students in senior classes. We are certainly hitting 5060 students. Wow. So our labs could not handle it, we had to offer many sections, because in engineering hands on is very, very important. So you can put five students in a lab experiment a door, then one is doing the experiment four is not doing anything. They're just sitting around, right. So we had to offer more sections. So I said, we got to increase the lab sizes. So we proposed a building 10 years ago. Wow. 10 years ago, took a long time, of course, we had to convince, I have worked under four different presidents and four or five different pros, three different governors. So you have to convince each time a new person comes on board, you gotta tell them why you need an engineering building. I kept doing it. I actually, I was going to Carson City so many times that I should have bought a condo there. Wow. Places nice to go visit not to stay so. So but anyway, so it took a long time. And we were growing not just an undergraduate enrollment, we are growing number of degrees, we are giving out number of PhDs we are producing among the research that's coming in. So we need a building. That's how we asked for a building. It took 10 years to get the money. We got half the money from the state, about 12 million from donors and rest of them from the university. It's 52,000 square feet, three floor building.

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Totally collaborative, totally collaborative, totally student focused. And the ground floor is completely for undergraduates up from anywhere mainly for engineering, but anywhere there's a beautiful Makerspace with 3d printers, laser cutters, anybody can walk in there with an idea. Use the software to develop and design the prototype, send it to the 3d printer or laser cutter will make it for you. Wow. So that is being being developed right now probably by the summer to be done. Second floor is completely computational research for undergraduates, graduate students and professors. When I say computational, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, anything to do with robotics, anything to do where you do need to do computational simulation, and that's the second floor. Third floor is completely Chemistry Biology tabber labs where you want to do work with viruses, bacteria for biomedical or you're working with chemicals for treating water, water treatment, water reclamation, or you're working with renewable energy, hydrogen, solar. So three floors, totally for students and faculty, no administration in the building. Wow. So I have two questions. Listening as you speak now, two things popped in my head. One, you talked about this, this need for a for another building? What caused this huge spike in students going from like 20 to apply 50 students? What was that catalyst? What caused that? Yeah, so the if, let me maybe I'll give you some numbers. When I when 2010. When I took over as dean, we were 1800 students. Today we are 3600 students, wow, doubles the number of undergraduates. And if you really look at our number of degrees we graduate gave out in 2010, we gave out 173, Bs and BA. This year, we will give out 450 More than 250%. So that kind of growth. I think it's organic in many ways. Because Clark County is doing wonderfully well. They're graduating a lot of students, they are seeing that going to UNLV engineering is worthwhile. It's cost cost effective. Education is very similar. They are all finding good jobs. So why not stay back in Clark County and go to UNLV. So that's one of the reasons and also our reputation has gone up in the last 15 years. Many of my program and degree programs have been nationally ranked internationally ranked. We are in the news all the time. Our students do a lot of hands on projects, international competitions, we win. And so that is one of the reasons why students are coming to us. Wow, that's excellent. You talk about the competitions that you that you your your students and winning, something came out this morning in the UNLV. Today

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that was titled A rebel makes it happen from academic probation to a dual degree in engineering. Could you tell us about that? You know, when students aren't doing that, well, what services are available for those students to improve and actually graduate? Right. So the biggest thing for for our university and UNLV engineering that we are an access university, right. We are here for helping our students or our State students or County students. Clark County School District is struggling with educating these kids because they don't have enough resources. So many, many times students think that they want to do engineering and computer science, but they're not very well prepared because the clock

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Connie's not able to give them what they need because they don't they have teacher shortage, they have all kinds of shortages. So when they come to us, they are not ready for engineering they are one year, sometimes even two years deficiency in math, they can't. So they need to spend two years before they really be admitted as an engineering major. So we do a lot of things for the students. And the student that you're talking about went through some exactly some of these things he came in, underprepared. And he started with a very low GPA, something like 1.2 or so on a four on a scale of four, he was not ready. And we provided him. So we identified that he needed some help. So we provided him tutoring help, because there are we have a tutoring center in our college. And anytime they need a tutor, we find individual tutor for students. And so this student was really literally identified and held in terms of what is challengers where we help them with tutoring, we help them with scholarship funds, we try, we also found out that he wanted to do a certain major, he was not ready for it, we helped him to switch major. So we did all of this over several years. Finally, the student is graduated with a degree a dual degree, and is actually even in the Capstone Design Competition you want to price

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student first really ready to drop out, is coming out with flying colors. That's what we did. So there are lots of facilities within the system. But sometimes students don't recognize they need help. And they don't ask. So these are two things that I want students to think about when they're struggling, they should think about, am I struggling? Or why am I struggling? First identify that, and then go ask for help. There are plenty of help on campus. So we are here to help. That is the very definition of why we come to this job every day is to be there for our students, to let them know, hey, help us here, ask for it, we will help you. That's the very definition. So much of what you've said of your own personal story resonates with me, I'm Jamaican immigrant, first generation caught so I'm familiar with that education or else get

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that education or else I'm Sandpoint of life and as I listened to you talk about it your your passion and your commitment is really evident to the students to the population, I am really excited to know that you meet students where they're at, and that you help them to align their their, you will help them to align their skills to their goals. Exactly. So one of the things that I wanted to ask you about as I hear you talk about these different versions of engineering, I know that there are different paths that students can take under the umbrella of engineering, would you mind sharing some of those things because I heard like cybersecurity, I heard robotics. I heard biomedical and those are like different things. So can you share that? So originally when, when engineering got started for this, I'm talking Harlan, 5200 years ago, we were applied mathematics and Applied Sciences, applied physics, applied physics, and math is what you would typically call engineering. And slowly, we started creating new engineering programs as technology develop ideas. The physics became basic physics became applied physics. So we had civil engineering, we had civil engineers do builds build bridges and infrastructure, buildings, bridges, roads, and that's what civil engineers to. Now civil engineering has an aspect called Environmental Engineering, so they treat water. So when we have a certain loss phase water is a big deal. So we don't want to waste water. So when there was wastewater, how do you reclaim the water back? It may have heavy metals, it may have pharmaceuticals, it may have bacteria, that environmental engineering, then you have mechanical engineering, robotics and the cars all of that is robot, mechanical engineering, anything nowadays we do we have to deal with electricity, right? And the electricity powers, our homes, our cars and everything else. That's electrical engineering. The last 30 years we have used more and more computers, that's computer engineering, right? And to make the computers work, you need the software behind it. That's computer science. And when you're using computer science, people are hacking into your system. You need cybersecurity. That's cybersecurity. So, anything where human lives are made better by engineers. We have an engineer, it can be biomedical engineering. There we are building orthotics and prosthetics for human beings are very implanting an lens in your eye, all of the biomedical engineering, and we deal with a lot of plastics and a lot of chemicals in our lives. That's chemical engineering. So there anything that we human beings use, right, we need to produce in bulk quantities. There is an engineering behind that that's there are so many engineering actually, every day there are new engineering being created. You know, the funny thing is, as you said that there is no part of your life that engineering doesn't touch. That's exactly right.

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think that's important for people to know, you know, when you think about engineering, almost every aspect of your life is impacted by someone who does. And then who has an engineering degree. So those kinds of jobs are readily available, because you were talking about even how people start out with their base salary and what that looks like for you. Can you talk about the path for a student who wants to get an engineering degree, right? So students will want to get an engineering degree, especially if young students in the middle school and elementary school are listening to it. Focus on mathematics, math and science are fundamental. Of course, you need to be able to read and write whatever ideas you have, you need to be able to sell it. So it's important to be able to read write and math and sciences. If you're good at math and science, whether even if you're not good at math and science, give it a hard try, you will be able to do well. I believe in perseverance and persistence, your duty will do well. And then when you come to college, you should be ready to get into calculus. That's the level of math you need to be ready. And once you get into calculus, and you're able to do some physics classes, you can decide whatever engineering you want to do as a freshman, could be a major, we offer mechanical engineering, civil engineering, computer engineering, computer science. And now we are creating a BS degree in cybersecurity. And we have a unique degree program called entertainment engineering, you probably never heard of it. It's an interdisciplinary degree program, one of a kind in the whole world. Nobody else has it. It's it's a complete beautiful mix of creative side and design side fine arts and engineering. So these students go through some classes in fine arts and they go through fundamental classes in engineering. So these are students are getting ready to go work for Disney Imagineering. Wow, our Cirque du Soleil or the water show on the strip. So this is unique degree program big. We have about 200 students in this program. We graduate about 20 of them every every year, this most probably next year will be accredited. So it's a unique degree programs. That's what I said, anything we do as human beings, we can create a de engineering degree program. Wow, I'm amazed by that. So is this a program created? Because it's in Las Vegas? And because of our surroundings here, it's exactly correct. So there are a couple of visionaries from fine arts and engineering, Dr. beam from electric he passed away. And Bradley from fine arts and the dean of fine art scope. They all got together on days that thought that hey, strip has so many technologies, there are technologies, lighting, technology, Sound Technology, Electrical Technology, can we put a D degree together where we mix creativity and design? That's how the idea came at this about 25 years ago, they thought about this. We created this program about 15 years ago. Now it's a pretty good program. Wow. That is that is truly exciting. I love the idea of Fine Arts mixed with engineering because those are two things that people might not marry together. So what have you heard from your students who are going through that program, or they all love it today, because it's a very hands on degree program, they get a lot of internships from local Las Vegas, especially from the Strip. Most of them find jobs here, no issues for them at all. And these jobs are well paying jobs. We are talking about salaries, these students who graduate from any engineering, they will make easily 60 $70,000, even $75,000. Computer science may get you a little bit more and depending on where you live. So most of our students will find jobs here, two thirds of them will find jobs in Las Vegas. Is it competitive to get into this particular program? Or is there a waitlist or? Yeah, right now we are an access university. So we do admit students who are ready for PreCalculus not calculus one year deficiencies. Still, we do admit them into our degree program, anybody who's

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ready for pre calculus, we will admit them into any other engineering degree program that we have. So because we are big on access, wow, absolutely amazing. Can you discuss the impact of hands on research experiences, such as internships and cooperative work programs on students academic and professional development within your college? Yeah. So our college is very, very big on hands on to me, an engineer who's just doing paper design or doing simulation is another true Engineer To Engineer as to build a true engineers to design and build and test that and shows that it works. That's That's my belief. Our college really sticks to that principle. Our students when they come out, they do the senior design competition that we talked a little bit about. It's a competition among all all our engineering students. It's going to happen this Thursday in the new building, and we have 39 students and about 200 students participating in this competition. We give out about 60 $70,000 prize money. I spend about 300,000 a year there run two competitions a year, big awards dinner on Friday, so we do twice a

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Yeah, so hands on is very big in college, our students build prototypes. Internships are very, very important because in in a university setting, we can only teach fundamentals in whatever discipline we teach, we can only teach fundamentals. Students have to practice that, to practice that they have to be in an industry. If you're in communication, you got to work in a TV setting, right? You have to be working with the channel via channel three, or whatever. That's how you get experience. Because real life, professional work is slightly different from what we teach, we teach you principles, but you need to take those principles and practice them. If you go and work for a company the first day, you may not be able to do a good job. But if you have had an internship, you know how to work, how to work with people. What is the industry driven by? So that's where internships are very, very vital. Absolutely. And I think he's helped build the resume as well. Now with the with the competition that's coming up.

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On Thursday, May 2, who's invited to that? Is it open for the public? Was it open for just certain students? Yeah, this competition is called Fred and Harriet Cox's senior design competition. Started about 23 years ago, I started this with one of my colleagues in mechanical engineering, John Wang, we had about $500, leftover from project, we wanted to create tech entrepreneurs out our students. So we put this $500 to create a competition then came along several entrepreneurs, industry partners, right now, we have three and a $3 million endowment for the competition. And several industry or 15. Industry partners support the competition. So the competition is really on every engineering student to graduate they need to build a project. That's part of their coursework. They do that as part of their coursework they get, they get credits for it, great for it, we don't mess with that. But we told the students, we are going to give you a prize money, build something commercially viable, innovative, solve some problem that human beings or communities or environment phases. So students started working on commercially viable projects. And we told them, it's got to be working prototype, you got to present it to industry judges, not not professors, you need to present it industry judges. On Thursday, we'll have 39 projects 16 industry partners will be judging this competition. And the morning hours are judged privately by the industry partners. Afternoon from about two to six. It's open to public, anybody can come. Any employer can come any community partner can come. And the ideas for these projects come from industry partners, community partners, if you have an idea, send me an email with a paragraph what you want built, why you want it to be built? And would you be willing to be a mentor and what the contact information is? We'll give it to the students. Students pick it up. You work with them. Wow. So it sounds like this is an opportunity for students to be in front of potential employers. totally correct. Wow. That is amazing. I kill a lot of students get jobs right out of that. Well,

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if it was student wanting to contact you to get into one of the engineering program, how would they contact you? Yeah, they can. I'll give you my cell number. My most of my it's not my email. My cell number is 702-217-8275. For my doors are always open to students on anybody. Actually, I get emails from all over the world all the time. Typically, I answered them back in one hour. Well, it's your office in the new building little No, as I said, the new building is for students and faculty only administrators stay away. So I'm not in the new building. Okay. Okay. Is there an email that students can reach out to you? My email is my first name Rama, Ra Ma, dot, then cat, b e n, k t@unlv.edu. It's on the website. So you will they will be able to see it. Excellent. Excellent. Is there any advice that what advice could you offer students? That's considering coming into one of the engineering programs? Yeah, so if you are considering computer science, or engineering, any degree program in that area, it's a great thing you will, as an engineer, you will solve problems. Your life will not be boring, you will be intellectually challenged all the time. Of course, it takes a little bit of hard work to be become an engineer, you got to be ready for math. And as I tell students, four years of hard work and 40 years of enjoyment or four years of fun and 40 years of nothing. So whichever one you want to do, please go for it. So I tell them, be prepared for math, and be persistent. Don't let anybody tell you that you are not good at math and you cannot be an engineer. Everybody can do anything they want to do in their lives. And I believe in it. I think you just need to seek help. And we will make you an engineer. So I

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One year. Of course, there's like incoming freshmen, there's people that transfer as well, at what year is there the most hands on and understand that, you know, during the senior year, that probably is a lot of hands on, because you're getting ready to graduate. But what you do that start. So in engineering nowadays, we start hands on projects to freshman year, there is something called a freshman design. The reason is, that is one way we want to engage students, we want students to bid even though they may not understand what design is, but we teach them little, little things. So we do freshman design, we do sophomore design, we do Junior design and senior design, senior design, they will be ready to do design by themselves. And when they go out, they are ready to be an engineer. So we do hands on are all every step of the way. But the hands on starts a little bit at a time, and then we add more and more and more and more toward by the time they become an engineer, they will be really doing good design projects. Wow. That is excellent. Excellent. I was gonna circle back around to the competition.

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Can I ask this question? And I've already asked if, once they start doing these projects, that that's the opportunity to stand in front of a employer. So when it comes to the resume portion of putting on there from knife up, nothing, I'm sorry, from freshman year up to senior year, all of those designs, do those count to go towards the resume saying hey, I have experience in doing this? Yes, actually, Junior design, for example, we have a competition. So if you want a competition, you can write it in your resume. Actually, you want to develop a portfolio and show that in your resume. I did this project as a freshman, as a sophomore, I did this. So anything that you do hands on, that's what industry partners care for, because they want to make products and sell. So they want to employ people who can build products. So definitely, it adds to it. And we do have a career center in the college. And that person really I like her. It's the name of the person. She really works with the students to prepare the resume. And you should tell them, hey, I did this, this this project. And she will say here, put that in. And we do place a lot of students in internships every year, many, many, many students, we have to be 3600 students. I would say every one of our students go through some internship or other in their four years at UNLV. Wow, excellent. Any closing? For you, Dr. We only since we only have a couple moments left. I was wondering, is there anything that you would like to share that you didn't have an opportunity to share? Or any question you'd like to answer that we didn't ask you that you think might be useful for the general population? And students to know? Yeah, but with students what I would say there are a couple of things I would say, actually, when Facebook was very popular, I said to my student, freshman students, close the Facebook and open the textbook, I think that's very important. Students have to really figure out when to study, and when they have some fun, right, we need to balance it number one, and anybody can do anything. So persist and persevere. Set your goals, identify where your challenges or your deficiencies, go ask for help. The whole world is out there to help you. Because we want you to be successful. We want you to be a successful citizen of this country, or the of this world. So ask for help. Don't ever hesitate to ask for help. And there is nothing wrong in saying I don't understand something. It's always good to ask questions. I believe in that. Excellent. Excellent. Thank you so very much. Before we go, can you share your contact information just one more time in case someone tunes in late? Yeah. Rama when Kat dean of Howard R Us College of Engineering. My cell number is 702-217-8275. My email is Ram a dot v e n k t@unlv.edu? I am. We are so very glad that you're here. And your program sounds amazing. And I hope that students take advantage of this wonderful opportunity that's presented to them. Right. And anybody wants to come and visit the new building or do summer program with us from K through 12. I'll put you into the right place. Absolutely. I definitely thank you for coming to the podcast. This is honestly this has been one of the best i for me personally and learning also about what's being offered there in the new building over the engineering building and some of the programs program. So this has been by far one of the best. We really appreciate you coming. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

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And that is a wrap.

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